After four years in the doldrums, the specialized chemical tankers that ply the seas between the United States and Asia are set to generate bumper profits for the handful of companies that own and operate them.

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. announced that it has placed a purchase contract on property where it hopes to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) fuel terminal in Jacksonville, Fla. This would be the first LNG facility on the Eastern seaboard to specifically supply LNG for the maritime, heavy-duty trucking and rail industries.

Challenge: A major Energy Equipment OEM was looking for a logistics company that shared their vision of quality, excellence, and customer satisfaction. The OEM needed a North American Tier 1 logistics provider that could improve the logistics management of their domestic Nuclear Power Plant projects.

Farmers, waste management companies and the energy industries have long experimented with converting methane, a byproduct of decomposing organic matter, into transportation fuel. Those efforts have met with mixed success, and a renewable natural gas fuel has not been widely available in the United States. But now, one leading supplier of natural gas transport fuel is taking a big step toward changing that.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) revised its 2013 global industry outlook downwards to $11.7bn on revenues of $708bn. Airline performance continued to improve in the second quarter, but at a slower pace than was expected with the previous projection (in June) of $12.7bn. This reflects the impact on demand of the oil price spike associated with the Syrian crisis and disappointing growth in several key emerging markets.

Challenge: A large industrial & manufacturing organization that delivers goods and services to the U.S. Department of Energy was looking to unify a collection of de-centralized procurement processes & systems spread across 26 facilities, each using a different process, supplier community and back-end system - including Ariba, PeopleSoft/Oracle, and SAP. The organization needed to gracefully tie these systems together in order to streamline supplier data management, consolidate supplier rates for goods and services and maximize savings.

For building products manufacturer Owens Corning Corp., whose annual transportation fuel bill hits about $100m, $1.1m in savings over the last year or so may seem like a drop in the bucket. Unless, that is, the bucket is filled with found money.